Politics volunteering japan

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Politics and Volunteering in Japan A Global Perspective Politics and Volunteering in Japan begins by painting a portrait of volunteering in Japan, and from this starting point it demonstrates that our current understandings of civil society have been based implicitly on a U.S. model that does not adequately consider participation patterns found in other parts of the world. The book develops a theory of civic participation that incorporates citizen attitudes about governmental and individual responsibility with societal and governmental practices that support (or hinder) volunteer participation. This theory is tested using cross-national and subnational statistical analysis, and it is refined through detailed case studies of volunteering in three Japanese cities. The findings are then used to build the Community Volunteerism Model, which explains and predicts both the types and rates of volunteering in communities around the world. The model is tested using four cross-national case studies (Finland, Japan, Turkey, and the United States) and three subnational case studies in Japan. Mary Alice Haddad is Assistant Professor of Government and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in political science at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has been the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including ones from the Fulbright-A50 Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. She has published articles in Comparative Political Studies and an award-winning article in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

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Politics and Volunteering in Japan A Global Perspective

MARY ALICE HADDAD Wesleyan University

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521869492 © Mary Alice Haddad 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2007 eBook (EBL) ISBN-13 978-0-511-29488-4 ISBN-10 0-511-29488-3 eBook (EBL) hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521-86949-2 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-86949-8

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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To My Parents For my mother who taught me to love the family trade and For my father who taught me the value of perseverance and dedication

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures

page ix xi xv

Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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Performing Their Civic Duty: A Theory of Volunteer Participation Patterns of Participation: Volunteering around the World Volunteering in Japan: Not Where You Would Expect Practices That Count: Legitimizing, Organizing, and Funding Volunteers Engaged Communities: The Community Volunteerism Model Cross-National Volunteer Participation: Testing the Community Volunteerism Model Conclusion: Practicing Citizenship

11 35 57 66 107 131 164

Appendix A: Research Design and Methods

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Appendix B: Membership Source Information Appendix C: Volunteering in Kashihara, Sakata, and Sanda Bibliography Index

187 193 201 215

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Tables and Figures

tables 2.1 Volunteer participation in the United States and Japan for selected organizations page 37 2.2 Factors influencing volunteer membership around the world 51 2.3 Factors influencing volunteer membership in OECD countries 52 2.4 Cross-national comparison of patterns of volunteer participation 53 3.1 Volunteer participation in Japanese prefectures: Full regressions 60 3.2 Volunteer behavior in Japanese prefectures: Rural-urban variables tested separately 61 3.3 Volunteer firefighter participation in Japanese municipalities 62 5.1 Predictions of the Community Volunteerism Model 110 5.2 Responses to NHK survey on attitudes 114 5.3 Chart of relative strength of each type of organization in each city 116 5.4 Independent variables for each city: Ideas 119 5.5 Independent variables for each city: Practices 119 6.1 Responses to the World Values Survey in Finland, Japan, Turkey, and the United States 133 6.2 Cross-national predictions of volunteer organization types 135

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6.3 Summary of practices in Finland, Japan, the United States, and Turkey 6.4 Volunteer participation for selected organizations in four countries A.1 City comparison A.2 Cross-national predictions of patterns in volunteer participation C.1 Volunteering in Kashihara C.2 Volunteering in Sakata C.3 Volunteering in Sanda

135 136 182 185 194 196 198

figures 2.1 Volunteer organizations in the United States and Japan 5.1 The Community Volunteerism Model

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Preface

Every day, millions of people perform a myriad of services in their communities for free. They might look after the elderly, clean parks, or risk their lives to put out a fire in a neighbor’s house. These volunteers form the core of civil society, the organized element of society that lies between the family and the government. As such, they not only play an invaluable role in preserving and protecting their communities but, by acting as channels of communication with the government, also help keep democracies accountable to their publics. Thus far, studies of comparative civil society have used three general approaches to explain why some communities or countries have much higher volunteer participation rates than others. They have examined how individual characteristics, such as education or income, increase the likelihood of individuals to volunteer; how social characteristics, such as levels of trust and social capital in a community, shape levels of volunteering; and how characteristics of government, such as levels of spending on social services, influence volunteer participation rates. All of these approaches have given us greater insights into volunteer behavior, but none of them can explain why volunteering is widespread in some communities whereas in others only a select few participate. Current approaches also cannot explain why one community might volunteer for organizations that work closely with their local governments, such as neighborhood associations or volunteer fire departments, whereas another might concentrate its resources on

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advocacy or service organizations that tend to avoid significant government involvement. This book takes a different approach to the study of volunteering. It argues that people do not volunteer in their communities because of their education level or level of social trust, or because the government spends a lot (or little) on social services. Rather, people around the world volunteer these valuable services for their communities because they think it is their civic responsibility to do so. Volunteers are performing a civic duty when they volunteer their time, their resources, even their lives for their communities. In the pages that follow, this book explores how this sense of civic duty is developed in different communities, and why it varies – in both content and intensity – from one community to another. Ever since Robert Putnam’s startling revelation in 1995 that Americans were “bowling alone,” participating less and less in group activities, academics and the public have been reexamining democracy and the civic associations that were believed to be its immutable foundations. Although some of these inquiries took place in democracies outside North America, much of the understanding of citizen participation is based on an implicit model derived from the U.S. experience. This book joins in the dialogue about the relationship between citizen activities in voluntary and civic associations and the democracies they create. It does this, however, with a twist. Rather than taking the American democracy as its starting point, it begins its story in Japan. By placing the Japanese experience in a comparative perspective, the book comes to a very different understanding of volunteer participation, one that includes types, found across the globe, that go undetected or underappreciated in the American model. Japanese have very high rates of participation in neighborhood associations, parent-teacher associations, volunteer fire departments, and other organizations that are locally based and work closely with the government. This type of volunteer participation, while present in the United States, is generally overlooked in favor of examining associational groups that build “social capital” (Putnam 2000), such as bowling leagues or book clubs; advocacy groups that promote particular political causes (Tarrow 1998; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995), such as the AARP or NAACP; or nonprofit organizations that provide social welfare services (Salamon et al. 1999), such as nonprofit

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hospitals or schools. By overlooking groups like neighborhood associations, which work closely with the government, civil society scholars have mischaracterized volunteer participation in Japan and have misinterpreted the nature of civil society itself. This book begins with the premise that civil society exists at the nexus of state and society, so patterns of participation can be explained only by exploring how civil society is shaped by the interaction of state and society. To this end, it explains participation patterns across as well as within countries. Citizen attitudes about individual and governmental responsibility for dealing with social problems determine the types of organizations that are prevalent in a community, and the practices of social and governmental institutions determine the rates of participation in a community. This examination of the nature of civil society highlights the prevalence and importance of civic organizations that target the bureaucracy, rather than politicians or the courts, in their attempts to inject citizen accountability into government policy making and implementation. Additionally, it demonstrates how community-level factors can encourage (or discourage) volunteer participation by contributing to the development and transmission of norms of civic responsibility. Civic organizations lie at the heart of the state-society relationship, and understanding why volunteering patterns emerge as they do provides important clues about the dynamic relationship between democratic citizens and their governments.

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Acknowledgments

This project has been an inspiration. Writing a book is a grueling experience, but I have been privileged to study a subject matter that has constantly put me in contact with the often forgotten, often overlooked elements of humanity that keep societies running in a positive direction. These are the people who are getting things done for their communities. Although many of them are dealing with intractable problems such as poverty, aging, truancy, and fire hazards, the men and women that I met – many in their sixties and seventies – are identifying problems, crafting solutions, and making life better for their neighbors. They are quiet, humble people who are putting in long hours and hard work to improve their communities, and they are succeeding. In a world where the media overwhelm us with stories of misery and hopelessness, it has been wonderful to spend some time in places where people are doing right by one another by making their small corner of the globe better for each other and for the next generation. As with all long projects, I have accumulated many debts, most of which I will never be able to repay. I hope that those many individuals and institutions that have helped me along the way can have some satisfaction and pride knowing that their contributions have been invaluable to the completion of this work. I begin by thanking those organizations that have provided financial support for my research. The Japanese Ministry of Education (Mombusho) provided funding for a predoctoral research year during 1998–1999. The Institute of International Education and the A50 xv

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Acknowledgments

Program awarded me a Fulbright Graduate Research Fellowship to conduct fieldwork in Japan for the 2001–2002 academic year. All of the Fulbright staff in Japan were exceedingly helpful and supportive of my research, and their assistance went far beyond the considerable financial support. I was also the beneficiary of a Chester Fritz Grant for International Exchange from the Graduate School of the University of Washington, which allowed me to buy a much-needed laptop computer. Sponsorship by the Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation allowed me to attend the very helpful Japan Dissertation Workshop in December 2000 in lovely Monterey, California. The Society for Comparative Research provided me with the extraordinary opportunity to participate with exceptional students and faculty from around the world during a graduate student retreat in Budapest, Hungary, in May 2002. The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies granted me a postdoctoral year in which I did most of the rewriting and revisions of the manuscript; time away from teaching and access to the superb faculty at Harvard were invaluable for the completion of this book. Finally, Wesleyan University, my current institution, has given me the support and encouragement necessary to see this manuscript into print. I have been privileged to work with extraordinary faculty. Chief among those to whom I am indebted are the members of my dissertation advisory committee: James Caporaso, Margaret Levi, Joel Migdal, and T. J. Pempel. Without their insightful criticisms, thoughtful comments, and constant support, this project would never have come to fruition. Special thanks go to T. J. Pempel and Joel Migdal. T. J. Pempel served as the chair of my committee for the first half of my graduate career, guiding me through the pitfalls of coursework and encouraging me to “think outside the box” in choosing a topic to research. Joel Migdal was the chair of my committee for the second half of graduate school. Through his care, mentoring, and ever-insightful editor’s pen, this book has greatly exceeded my humble expectations. While I was in Japan, Ikuo Kume at Kobe University provided me invaluable support as I struggled with language, theoretical dead ends, and research roadblocks. Additional thanks go to the wonderful faculty at Harvard, especially Susan Pharr, Robert Putnam, Margarita Estevez-Abe, Pippa Norris, and Theda Skocpol. All of them bent their extraordinary minds around my project, offering valuable criticisms and suggestions at

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critical moments during my revisions. As I begin to embark on my own career as an academic, I cannot thank them enough for being living examples of what it means to be a good scholar. They have demonstrated the ideal to which I aspire. In addition, my colleagues have also given me much needed advice and support. At the University of Washington I would like to thank Betsi Beem, Debbi Elms, Cynthia Horne, Turan Kayoglu, and the members of the Japan Reading Group (especially Michael Strausz, Yuko Kawato, and Hiro Sasada). In Japan, special thanks go to Ayako Kusunoki and to my “sempai extraordinaire,” Robert Eldridge. At Harvard, Lara Deeb, Sherrill Stroschein, Conor O’Dwyer, Jonathan Marshall, and Kentaro Fukamoto have my everlasting gratitude. I am also grateful to John Campbell, Tuomas Forsberg, Sky Hiltunen, David Leheny, Frank Schwartz, and Jenny White for their invaluable feedback on early versions of parts or all of the manuscript. At Wesleyan, Manolis Kaparakis, Bruce Masters, Jim McGuire, Don Moon, and Peter Rutland have all provided important assistance with various aspects of the final processes of the manuscript’s preparation. Finally, special thanks go to John Chisholm for his valuable research assistance. Perhaps my largest debt is to those inspiring volunteers and city employees who gave me the material necessary to write this book. Chief among those is Kanaya Syouji in Sanda. Kanaya-katcho not only set me up with the interviews I needed in Sanda, but he also provided the contacts I relied on in Kashihara and Sakata. His generosity with his time, resources, insights, and homegrown veggies were the mainstay of this project. I must also extend a huge thanks to Sugawara Tsukashi, my main contact in Sakata, who managed to book my schedule so full that I was able to complete the interviews and collect the documents that took me two months in Sanda in only one week in Sakata. The welcome shown to me by everyone in Sakata, complete with a sakuraviewing expedition, demonstrated the best that Japanese hospitality has to offer. Oka Shigeki and Murai Senyoshiko in Kashihara introduced me to the extraordinary range of vibrant voluntary activity in that city. I conclude with an enormous thank you to my family. My parents, Perry and Sarah Pickert, have always encouraged me to pursue my dreams and have supported my choice of an academic career. Because they both also have doctorates, they have sympathized with my agonies

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Acknowledgments

and celebrated my triumphs as I have moved along this path. It is to them that I dedicate this book. I also thank my brother, Perry Pickert, who has offered wise words and encouragement and has also designed the beautiful cover. Finally, my husband Rami has made the past five years of this long journey the most joyful and fulfilling ones, even as our new son Tammer is bringing more laughter and love to our lives than I ever thought possible.

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Introduction

On a warm sunny day in May, I was drawn out into the neighborhood streets by the sound of deep Taiko drumbeats followed by resounding cheers. As I followed the stream of people walking around the corner, I witnessed a hugely ornate mikoshi (portable shrine) making its way down my street – led by several dozen cheering people ranging in age from six weeks to eighty years. Half a dozen happi-coat clad youths were perched atop the large four-wheeled mikoshi, beating the Taiko drums, ringing bells, and chanting a call-and-response with those on the ground. I joined the spectators on the sidewalk for a while and smiled as the procession made its way through the small back streets of my community. Just as the small crowd on the roadside dispersed for people to continue with their weekend chores, resonant drumming could be heard again in the distance. Within ten minutes, another, equally ornate mikoshi could be seen rounding the corner a few blocks away, coming toward me. All day long the dozen or so mikoshi for the different shrines serving the community made their way through every street, blessing each road, each house, and each family for a prosperous year. Small volunteer fire trucks followed behind, keeping the peace and watching out for public safety. As evening drew near, the entire neighborhood emerged to watch the festivities. Paper lanterns lit the sides of the roads, guiding residents toward the center of the neighborhood, a small square in front of the main Japan Railways train station. Many wore their favorite yukata (cotton kimono), and children laughed as they nibbled on cotton candy 1

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Politics and Volunteering in Japan

or grilled squid-on-a-stick picked up by a parent or friend from a nearby food stand. Everyone chatted, sharing the local gossip. Residents laughed, offering sake and beer to neighbors, often poking fun at those who had already imbibed too much. Under the glowing light of large paper lanterns announcing the Okamoto Festival in the center of the neighborhood and the dimmer glow from hundreds of smaller lanterns painted with the names of large contributors, the mikoshi began to convene. To the beat of the Taiko drums, the ringing of bells, and, what was most important, the loud encouragement of hundreds of spectators, the mikoshi teams proceeded to show off their tricks. One after another, the troops of drummers, middle school baton throwers, high school band players, and assorted dancers paraded by with their mikoshi, cheering and shouting as it stood up on end, rotated, and turned down the different streets. The teams competed to outdo each other in gymnastic feats and especially in the volume of noise generated from the crowd. After performing their tricks, each mikoshi would set out in a different direction, making its way back to its local shrine processing along the main and side streets, followed by a caravan of happy, tipsy neighbors. Eventually, community members headed home; parents carried sleeping toddlers; teenagers moaned about leaving their friends; and the rest of us strolled back to our apartments with smiles on our faces, looking forward to a good night’s sleep. All this did not take place in a small, rural Japanese village where traditions are maintained through the rhythm of agricultural life, but in Kobe, one of Japan’s largest cities, with a population of more than 1.5 million people. The neighborhoods that were able to generate the hundreds of volunteers and thousands of volunteer hours necessary to put on this kind of event were not ones where everyone knows everyone else – nearly 200,000 people live in the Higashinada-ku district where the Okamoto neighborhood festival took place. The small volunteer fire department truck that followed the mikoshi throughout the day and the scores of volunteer firefighters who acted as street patrol for the evening festivities were not anomalies – Kobe city has 4,000 active volunteer firefighters (even Tokyo with a population of 12 million people has nearly 25,000 volunteer firefighters). Daily life in Kobe provides a myriad of obvious and not-so-obvious examples of lively volunteering and civic participation in the community. Every month the community newsletter for the ward (jointly

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sponsored by the government’s city office and the volunteer neighborhood associations and hand-delivered by a member of the neighborhood association) would arrive in my mailbox. The newsletter detailed upcoming community events; provided important public announcements; issued volunteer recruitment drives; and listed the names, districts, and contact information for newly appointed volunteer welfare commissioners for the area. Garbage is collected twice a week from each street corner by municipal sanitation trucks. If one did not observe carefully, one would assume that these same trucks pick up the recycling materials that must also be placed on the street corner. In fact, volunteers from the neighborhood associations, not city employees, are responsible for making sure that the recycling is sorted properly. During my frequent afternoon jogs in a park along a nearby stream, I would often encounter white-gloved residents wearing their neighborhood association t-shirts or sashes walking with garbage bag and tongs in hand, picking up litter along the path and stream bank as others walked and ran by, chatted, played with their dogs, or practiced musical instruments. In the course of researching this book, I spent eighteen months in Kobe, nine months during the 1999–2000 academic year concentrating on language proficiency and preliminary research, and nine months during the 2001–2002 academic year conducting fieldwork. All told, I’ve spent approximately three years studying, working, and traveling in Japan. I have lived in homestay families, in dormitories, and on my own in cities from as far south as Hiroshima to as far north as Tokyo. Throughout my many stays, both before I was researching the topic of voluntarism directly and especially after I began concentrating my studies on civil society, I was astounded with the vibrant community life that bustled throughout Japan. Anywhere in the country, I could walk by a community center and witness the civic involvement of the neighborhood. Bulletin boards are covered with carefully organized notices of upcoming events, meetings, and volunteer campaigns. In vibrant communities, I could stop by any time of day and find volunteers chatting with elderly residents, playing games, or doing crafts with them in organized day services. Although I did not witness the bento (lunch box) making directly, I could see the results of the flurried activity that must have occurred early in the morning: bento boxes stacked for delivery to housebound elderly, women rushing in and out of the buildings returning the empty boxes

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for washing, and trash bags filled to the brim placed near entryways for pickup. Outside in the neighborhood parks, groups of retirees gather in the early mornings for festive (and competitive!) rounds of gate ball, and in the evenings couples and families meet together to play tennis, all of them taking advantage of organized clubs. Yet all of these activities are occurring in a country widely described by social scientists as a volunteering laggard. Nearly every crossnational study of civic engagement and volunteering that has included Japan describes its civil society as “underdeveloped” or “weak” when compared with other advanced capitalist democracies (Curtis, Grabb, and Baer 1992; Salamon et al. 1999; Vosse 1999; Yamamoto 1999). This view suggests that “‘Civil society’, the part of the body politic outside the active Government and power system – is virtually unknown in Japan” (Wolferen 1991). Universally, the weakness in Japan’s civil society is attributed to a dominant, omnipresent bureaucratic state. One scholar wrote as recently as 1999, “Japan has not yet fully developed into a civil society that can comprehensively be considered an effective counterbalance to the state and its bureaucracy-dominated system” (Vosse 1999, p. 32). Often, Japan’s centralized state is explained as a result of its “late development,” which has forced Japan’s government to focus on “catching up” with the advanced industrialized countries in Western Europe and North America (Dore 1973; Gerschenkron 1962; Huntington 1969; Samuels 1994; Woo-Cumings 1999). Historians have also examined the specific legal mechanisms through which the government has limited the growth of civil society and co-opted organizations into supporting national agendas (Garon 1997; Iokibe 1999; Schwartz 2002). Yet, this anecdotal evidence suggests that Japan’s civil society is far more vibrant than scholars have credited. The groups responsible for organizing these activities are involved in a number of important aspects of civic life. Much of their time is spent purely socializing, which helps build social capital among neighbors and may involve more doing with rather than doing for other people (Putnam 2000, p. 117). Other aspects of their activities are essentially the provision of services; while firefighters might enjoy getting together for training, they are also providing protection for their communities. Finally, some of their actions fall squarely into traditional definitions of civic participation, such as contacting public officials, working with government

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to develop policies, and debating public issues (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Civil society is multifaceted, and within it, volunteer organizations play three vital roles: they are the forum through which citizens meet one another to build trust and social capital; they act as a low-cost service provider, supplying necessary social services to meet the needs of community residents; and they act as a pipeline between society and the state, relaying citizen concerns to public officials and public policies to citizens. Although the research presented in this book touches on all three contributions of volunteer organizations, the emphasis is on their role as mediators between citizens and government officials. Although the literature would suggest otherwise, Japan has extensive volunteer participation when viewed from a cross-national comparative perspective. Japan currently has nearly 1 million volunteer firefighters and 11 million parent-teacher association (PTA) members; measured on a per capita basis, this is more than twice as many volunteer firefighters and more than four times as many PTA members as in the United States, a country regularly ranked among the leaders in volunteer participation.1 So, although Japan developed late and has a strong, centralized state, it also has a vibrant civil society. Comparatively speaking, its volunteer participation is equivalent to, or even exceeds, that found in other advanced capitalist countries. What accounts for the discrepancy between Japan’s high level of actual volunteer participation and the low levels of civic engagement expected and reported by academics? Japan may have high levels of civic engagement, but levels of participation are also not uniform across the country. The same neighborhood festival depicted here might receive a more lukewarm reception in a city

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The United States has 800,050 volunteer firefighters, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council Factsheet: http://www.nvfc.org/pdf/2005-fact-sheet.pdf (12/21/05), and about 6 million PTA members, according to the National PTA Web site: http://www.pta.org/jp why join pta.html (12/21/05). Japan has 919,105 volunteer firefighters, according to the Volunteer Fire Department home page data: http://www.fdma.go.jp/syobodan/whats/data.html (12/21/05), and 11 million PTA members, according to the Nippon PTA Zenkoku Kyougikai (Japan’s National PTA Council), Web site: http://www.nippon-pta.or.jp/jigyougaiyou/gaiyou 3.html (12/21/05). Population data from OECD figuresare from http://www.oecd.org/ dataoecd/62/38/35267227.pdf (12/21/05). Dates in parentheses after Web sites indicating date of access are given as month, day, year.

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outside Kobe, or even in a different district within the same city. Some communities have active populations that volunteer for any number of service activities, while others have much lower levels of involvement. Furthermore, the divisions are not easily explained by rural-urban locations, levels of education, or per capita income. The cities of Kashihara and Sanda both have populations of about 100,000 people, most of whom commute to nearby cities for work. Kashihara has only 258 volunteer firefighters, whereas Sanda has more than twice as many (703). Kashihara is not an uninvolved community, however. It has more than twice as many eldercare volunteers (3,546) as Sanda (1,289). Why do members of these two cities participate at such different rates and for such different activities? This book demonstrates that local communities and even entire countries have different volunteering profiles and asks why such different profiles emerge in different communities and countries. Although cultural heritage and historical precedent certainly influence volunteer participation, I argue that differences in types and rates of volunteering can be explained by examining norms of civic responsibility and how such norms are produced and reinforced in a particular community. In countries such as Japan, the norms of civic responsibility encourage involvement in volunteer organizations that have close, embedded relationships with the government. These organizations have frequent, habitual interactions with the bureaucracy and engage cooperatively in policy making and implementation processes with bureaucrats. In other countries such as the United States, the norms of civic responsibility encourage involvement in volunteer organizations that have more distant relationships with the government. These organizations tend to engage with politicians and the courts rather than with bureaucrats when they are advocating on behalf of a particular cause, and as a result their relations with the government are often confrontational. When these organizations are involved with the bureaucracy, they are likely to have highly structured, contract relationships that clearly stipulate the obligations of both sides and are centered around specific projects rather than on maintaining a long-term relationship. Thus far, comparative research on civil society, demonstrating a strong bias toward U.S.-type volunteering, has ignored the importance of embedded organizations. Researchers examining Japan have also focused on the kinds of participation prevalent in the United States.

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In examining Japan, they have sought out advocacy groups that lobby politicians and incorporated nonprofits that contract with the government to provide social services and have found such organizations in short supply. As a result, these researchers have asked why volunteering and civic participation are lacking in Japan, not why they take on different patterns.2 In addition to explaining patterns in volunteer participation around the world – why some countries have more of one type of volunteering and fewer of another type of volunteering – this book is also concerned with explaining the rate of volunteer participation. Thus far, most studies of volunteer participation and civic engagement have looked to individual characteristics, such as education level, age, or propensity to watch television to explain national or even regional variation in levels of volunteering (Ladd 1999; Putnam 2000; Wuthnow 1998). As demonstrated in subsequent chapters, however, these individual-level factors do not account for variation between communities. In contrast to prevailing approaches that focus on the characteristics of individuals, this book looks to the practices of state and social institutions to explain why some communities volunteer more than others with similar demographic characteristics. I argue that communities that traditionally support volunteers – by funding, organizing, and legitimizing them – will have higher rates of volunteer participation. Communities that do not support their volunteers with these practices will have lower rates of volunteer participation in all types of organizations, whether embedded or not. The primary goal of this book is to predict and explain patterns in volunteer participation found in different communities. Why do some communities have more volunteers in organizations that have close, embedded relationships with the government and fewer volunteers in organizations with more distant relationships with the government (and vice versa)? Why do some communities have higher rates of volunteer participation than others? Volunteer organizations lie at the heart of the state-society relationship, and understanding why volunteering patterns emerge as they do 2

A notable exception to this rule is new work by Pekkanen 2002. He offers an institutional explanation for the low numbers of advocacy volunteers and high numbers of neighborhood association members.

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provides clues about the health and operation of the dynamic relationship between democratic citizens and their governments. Therefore, understanding patterns of volunteer participation is vital not only for understanding and enhancing democratic development but also for enhancing social welfare.

chapter outline The next chapter develops a theory of volunteer participation. I theorize that volunteer participation in a community is a function of that community’s norms of civic responsibility. These norms are formed by the ideas that citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems and the practices of state and social institutions that support or inhibit volunteer organizations. The ideas citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility inform the content of a community’s norms of civic responsibility, suggesting which types of organizations citizens should join. The practices of state and social institutions affect the strength of those norms, influencing citizens’ participation rates. The chapter also reviews the relevant literature on civil society, explains my theory of volunteer participation, and develops hypotheses. The second chapter begins by debunking the common understanding that Japanese citizens volunteer less than people in other advanced democracies. Next, through a cross-national analysis of membership in eight different voluntary organizations (Red Cross, volunteer fire departments, YMCA, etc.), using data gathered from sixty-eight countries around the world, the chapter demonstrates that citizen attitudes toward governmental and individual responsibility can account for volunteer participation patterns found in these countries. In countries such as Japan, where citizens think that the government should take responsibility for dealing with social problems, there is more participation in organizations that have close, embedded relationships with the government. In contrast, in countries such as the United States, where citizens think that individuals should take responsibility for dealing with social problems, there is more participation in organizations that have more distant relationships with the government. Alternative explanations for volunteer participation (education, income, urbanization, etc.) are

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also tested and found to have less explanatory power than citizen ideas about governmental and individual responsibility. Turning from the question about different types of volunteer participation, Chapter 3 moves on to ask why rates of participation vary. The chapter uses data from Japan’s forty-seven prefectures and 3,258 municipalities to show that current explanations (e.g., education, income, demographics) fail to account for variation in participation rates in similarly situated communities. Chapter 4 then seeks to discover the community-level processes that can explain variation in participation rates. These community-level processes are explored in greater depth in detailed case studies of three Japanese cities with varying rates of volunteer participation. The experiences of volunteers in Kashihara, Sakata, and Sanda, selected as “most similar” cases, demonstrate that governmental support and social support of volunteers through legitimation, organization, and funding are key to explaining variations in participation rates across communities. Even when demographic and other characteristics are similar, cities that had provided volunteer organizations with legitimizing support (through legal and symbolic means), organizational support (through public relations or other practices), and financial support (with direct or indirect funding) had much higher rates of participation than cities that had not provided volunteer organizations with these kinds of supports. The fifth chapter combines the findings from Chapters 2, 3, and 4 to develop the Community Volunteerism Model. The model predicts that the types of volunteer organizations found in a community depend on the attitude that citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems, and the rates of volunteer participation depend on the extent to which communities legitimize, organize, and fund volunteers. The chapter then returns to the cases of Kashihara, Sakata, and Sanda to illustrate how the model explains their patterns of volunteer participation and explores what the model can reveal about their possible future participation patterns. Chapter 6 tests the Community Volunteerism Model cross-nationally using the cases of the United States, Japan, Finland, and Turkey, selected as “most different” cases because they have very different patterns of volunteer participation, both in terms of rate and type of participation. The chapter demonstrates how well the model works to

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explain the types and rates of participation found in each of the four countries. Applying the model draws attention to aspects of civil society in the four countries that are often overlooked, particularly the prevalence and important role of embedded volunteer organizations. The model also highlights dynamic state-society interactions, showing the ways that changing citizen ideas and institutional practices are influencing patterns of volunteer participation. I conclude the book by exploring some of the implications of this study. In particular, I discuss my empirical and theoretical claims and highlight how my findings give us new insight and help us to ask new questions about civil society, civic participation, and democracy around the world.

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1 Performing Their Civic Duty A Theory of Volunteer Participation

Why do some places have much more participation in organizations that have close, embedded relationships with the government, whereas other places that may have equally high participation rates favor organizations with more distant relationships with the government? Further, why do some communities, even when compared to similarly situated communities in the same country, have much higher rates of volunteering? To address these two questions, this chapter develops a theory of volunteer participation that explains both the types of volunteer participation as well as the rates of participation found in a community. The theory, in a nutshell, posits that volunteer participation in a community is a function of that community’s norms of civic responsibility. Such norms are formed by the ideas that citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems and the practices of governmental and social institutions that support or inhibit volunteer organizations. The ideas citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility inform the content of a community’s norms of civic responsibility, suggesting which types of organizations are prevalent in a community. The practices of governmental and social institutions affect the strength of those norms, thereby influencing community participation rates. My theory of volunteer participation departs from other theories explaining volunteer participation in three fundamental ways. First, in utilizing a state-in-society approach I assume that both society and the 11

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state are integral to the development of civil society and civic participation; I specify the ways that each side interacts with the other to encourage or discourage volunteer participation. Second, by examining the practices of state and society in addition to their institutions, I explain variation in civic participation at multiple levels, across countries as well as across prefectures or cities within a single country. Finally, I show that civic participation is strongly related to community-level factors rather than just individual characteristics. Thus, in this work the community, not the individual, is the unit of analysis. This perspective makes it possible to explain differences in participation rates among demographically similar communities, and it generates meaningful recommendations for increasing a community’s volunteer participation. I have chosen to investigate volunteer participation as a window into civil society because, in addition to voting, volunteer participation in civic organizations is one of the most important ways that individuals practice their citizenship. Volunteer organizations are critical components of civil society. It is through these organizations that citizens are able to keep governments accountable to their publics and through their participation that citizens develop social capital and civic skills (Kramer 1981; Salamon et al. 1999; Skocpol 2004; D. Smith 2000; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995; Wuthnow 1991). Examining where, how, and why people volunteer provides a window into the nature of civil society and helps explain why it takes different forms in different places. This chapter begins with a review of the literature on comparative civil society, highlighting the benefits of the state-in-society approach. I build on this literature to construct a new theory of volunteer participation and then use the theory to develop testable hypotheses.

comparative civil society scholarship Studies of volunteering and civic engagement can trace their roots to Aristotle’s writings on democracy, but most begin with Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America written after his travels to this country in the early nineteenth century. In his account Tocqueville expounds the virtues of Americans’ propensity to join civic associations. He argues that volunteer associations provide critical training grounds for future democrats: they inculcate democratic values of

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tolerance, communication, and trust; and they transmit civic skills of debate and public discourse. His line of reasoning – that high levels of civic engagement translate into successful democracies – has been tested by a number of scholars, who have used statistical data from both developed and developing countries to illuminate convincing correlations between civic engagement and successful democracies (Almond and Verba 1963; Cohen and Arato 1992; Inglehart 1988; Putnam 1993; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992). In 1995, however, Robert Putnam wrote an alarming article in Journal of Democracy called “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital.” In it he argued that the civic associations, so often cited as the core foundation of American democracy, were in dire condition. America was no longer the “nation of joiners” suggested by Tocqueville and touted by Schlesinger (1944). Whereas Americans had once joined bowling leagues, now they went to the bowling lanes alone, stayed home watching television, or occupied themselves with some other form of individualized leisure. Putnam’s article, and his 2000 book by the same title, struck a cord deep within the American public as well as academia, leading many scholars to reexamine the nature and health of civic engagement in the United States and around the world. This new research represented a fundamental shift in scholarship on civil society. No longer were civic engagement and volunteering patterns treated as independent variables that explained cross-national or subnational variations in democratic performance. Instead, they had become dependent variables, something to be explained. This book follows the path cut out by this new research agenda. Variation in civic engagement – volunteer participation in particular – is the object of inquiry. Volunteer organizations are utilized as a window through which to examine patterns of civic participation around the globe. Although this book includes a wide range of organizations, my emphasis is on volunteer organizations in which participants donate time and energy to provide necessary services to their communities. Volunteer firefighters are one such group. In every advanced democracy most firefighters are volunteers, although percentages range from Sweden’s 66 percent part-time firefighters to Switzerland’s 99 percent volunteer firefighting force (see Appendix B for detailed comparisons). These men and women risk their lives protecting their communities,

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and the reasons why some communities are able to encourage so many of their citizens to volunteer for such service while others have more difficulty generating participation are the central concerns of this book. The new research agenda aimed at explaining variation in civic engagement comprises two main avenues of scholarship. The first begins with society, examining how the behavior and characteristics of individuals influence civic engagement. The second begins with the state, examining how its institutions and policies influence civic engagement. Putnam’s seminal Bowling Alone (2000) posits that the level of civic engagement can be explained by looking at changes in society. Specifically, he argues that demographic and social factors such as generational changes, longer commuting distances, two-income households (working women), and television watching have reduced individuals’ propensity to become civically engaged. The trends of declining participation in bowling leagues notwithstanding, a number of scholars have found rising participation in newer types of groups such as self-help groups or environmental advocacy organizations (Ladd 1999). The rise of Internet technology has opened up additional possibilities for grassroots organization and political engagement – Pippa Norris (2001, 2002) has found that Internet users are much more likely to be politically active than nonusers, and that organizations are finding new and innovative ways to use the Internet as an additional resource to enhance communication and expand participation in their organizations. Reconciling these apparently contradictory accounts, Robert Wuthnow (1998) suggests that scholars need to examine not only the overall levels of civic engagement but also where citizens are devoting their time. He suggests that not all civic participation is the same – certain kinds of organizations that might have enjoyed support at one time might be declining, but other kinds of organizations are taking their place. As a result of what he calls “loose connections” in society, organizations that can accommodate flexible work schedules and require smaller time commitments are thriving whereas those traditional groups that count on citizens for regular weekly meetings or require long-term commitments are having trouble. All of these scholars look to aspects of society to explain the levels and types of civic engagement. In her review of the civic engagement literature, Theda Skocpol terms them “neo-Durkheimian” to emphasize

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their “bottom-up” orientation (Skocpol and Fiorina 1999, p. 13). For these scholars, individual involvement in civil society has changed due to social and demographic shifts, and higher levels of civic engagement are assumed to be better for democracy. Following Tocqueville, these authors argue that when individuals are engaged in civic activities, they develop skills that help them to become better democratic citizens (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995); however, they do not theorize a direct relationship between citizen participation in voluntary organizations and the state. In this conceptualization of civil society, the state has little influence over the shape or size of civil society. Skocpol challenges these scholars to be more attentive to the role of the state – its institutions and policies – in shaping civil society. In a comprehensive study of nearly two hundred years of volunteer associations in the United States, she and her colleagues show how large voluntary associations began to take on the institutional structure of the federal government, developing local, state, and federal levels to their organizations to create large, national federations that became politically powerful (Skocpol, Ganz, and Munson 2000). In a similar vein, Margaret Levi issues a powerful critique of civil society scholars who ignore the influence of the state in her response to Putnam’s Making Democracy Work (1993). She writes: “Governments provide more than the backdrop for facilitating trust among citizens; governments also influence civic behavior to the extent they elicit trust or distrust toward themselves” (Levi 1996, p. 51). Indeed, scholars, such as Levi, who examine the historical origins of the state and civil society have observed the many ways that states can influence the shape and scope of civic engagement in the countries that they govern. Jonah Levy’s Tocqueville’s Revenge (1999) reveals the profound influence that national deregulation and decentralization policies had on the development of civic organizations in French localities. In his examination of two cities with similarly favorable economic and social environments but dramatically different outcomes after the implementation of these policies, he successfully demonstrates that “state actions have the capacity both to strengthen and to erode civil society” (Levy 1999, p. 13). In Molding Japanese Minds (1997) historian Sheldon Garon shows how the Japanese state was active in the creation of certain welfare-enhancing “civic” organizations such as the volunteer welfare

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commissioner system, and he documents how the state infiltrated local neighborhood associations and co-opted women’s groups. Garon’s findings are further reinforced by Amemiya (1998), Iokibe (1999), and Pekkanen (2000), who examine the ways that the legal system in Japan has restricted the growth of nonprofit organizations, constraining civic activities in areas that might threaten the government while encouraging state-friendly organizations and activities. Just as scholars of advanced democracies have demonstrated that the state can influence civic engagement, researchers examining the developing world have also found the role of the state to be important in explaining the activities of civic organizations. In their studies of China, both Susan Whiting (1991) and Vivienne Shue (1997) show how many of the nonprofit and civic organizations are manipulated or even controlled by the communist state. In his study of nonprofit organizations in Jordan, Quintan Wiktorowicz finds similarly restrictive state oversight over civic activities. He cautions that the legal discretion afforded government ministries “allows the state to shape the specifics of organizational activity in the kingdom and directs civil society associations into activities approved by the regime” (Wiktorowicz 2000, p. 52). The state certainly influences the shape of civil society, but just as scholars who look primarily to society to explain variation in civil society patterns are missing half the story, those authors who seek to explain that same variation by focusing on the state are equally limited. Civil society by its very nature lies at the nexus between state and society (Blaney and Pasha 1993; Habermas 1989; Keane 1988; Salamon et al. 1999; D. Smith 2000; Ware 1989; Wuthnow 1991). In a small number of ways, such as voting, citizens can influence the government directly; however, citizens can also work through civic organizations rather than as isolated individuals. These organizations gather citizen preferences and find ways to transmit those preferences to the government, whether by lobbying politicians, suing in the courts, or working directly with bureaucrats. These same civic organizations often work the other way as well – transmitting information or wishes of the government to citizens. When policies relevant to the organization need to be enacted, the government will often ask the organization to disseminate information about the policy or perhaps assist in the actual implementation of the policy. In this way these organizations act as a “pipeline” between citizens and

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the state – they channel citizen wishes to the government and government information to the citizens. In order to understand why patterns of participation occur as they do, it is vital to develop a theory that incorporates both the state and citizen activities in society, capturing the interaction between the two. Two works have been particularly influential in shaping the development of my theory of volunteer participation. In State in Society (2001), Joel Migdal provides a theoretical framework called the statein-society approach, which enables the incorporation of the influences of both state and society into a single theory of volunteer participation. Robert Wuthnow’s Loose Connections (1998) highlights the importance of recognizing different types of civic organizations and makes the link between ideas of citizenship and citizen responsibility and volunteer participation. As developed by Migdal (1988; 2001; Migdal, Kohli, and Shue 1994), the state-in-society approach conceptualizes the state as embedded in, rather than independent from, its society. Of primary interest to state-in-society scholars is the investigation of the imperfect and often contradictory interaction between state and society. For Migdal (2001, p. 16), “Actual states are shaped by two elements, image and practices.” The image of the state specifies the territorial boundary between the state and other states and the social boundary between the state and its society. The practices of the state are important because of the ways that they reinforce or undermine the image the state is trying to maintain about itself. This way of looking at the state also provides a useful perspective on civil society. Just as the state is shaped by the ideas people share about its limits – its physical limits that are defined in a geographical boundary and social limits that distinguish it from society – civil society is also shaped by the ideas that people share about its role in relationship with the state. In particular, citizens have ideas about the appropriate role of the state and the extent of governmental responsibility for dealing with problems in society – ideas that the government should be responsible for certain problems and not others, that it should get involved to some extent but no further. Similarly, citizens have ideas about the appropriate role of civil society in dealing with problems in society: private citizens and organizations should limit their activities to certain issue areas and to a certain

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degree of involvement. For example, in most places public safety is viewed primarily as the government’s responsibility. Private citizens and organizations are not expected or encouraged to track down criminals and punish them. If a group in society wants a higher degree of safety than is offered by the government, however, then it is acceptable for that community to hire private guards or organize a “neighborhood watch” group to give it extra security, although punishment of criminals is still the purview of the government. These ideas about the appropriate role of governmental and nongovernmental actors vary from place to place, and this variation can help explain why civil society takes on different shapes in different places, why some types of organizations are more or less prevalent in a given community. Just as they are for the state, institutional structures and especially the practices of those institutions are important for explaining the shape and size of civil society. Institutional structures, such as a particular tax law that enables tax deductions for donations to certain kinds of organizations, and practices, such as the enforcement or nonenforcement of that law, greatly influence the kinds of organizations that are prevalent in a community as well as the rate at which people participate in them. These two components – citizen ideas about the responsibility of government and that of private individuals for dealing with social problems and the practices of governmental and social institutions – are the framework around which I build my theory of voluntary participation. Utilizing the state-in-society approach, this theory incorporates both governmental and social influences on the shape and size of civil society without privileging one side over the other. In the second work that has been particularly influential for this theory, Loose Connections (1998), Robert Wuthnow argues that organizations are of two different types: “tight” and “loose.” Tight organizations tend to be more traditional groups in which the same group of people meets for many years on a regular basis. They form very close connections to one another, connections of mutual obligation that extend beyond the activities of the organization. Loose organizations tend to be newer groups that form spontaneously in response to a particular issue or cause or form to support a nonprofit organization. These organizations demand less of their participants; people can

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come and go easily according to their schedules. The participants in these groups often make friends with one another, but the commitment they feel to the organization and to its members is fleeting compared with members of tight organizations. As a sociologist, Wuthnow focuses primarily on the role of society; state influences on the shape and size of these groups are not really discussed. As a political scientist, however, I thought that the ideas of tight and loose connections could be applied not only to the connections that participants feel toward one another but also to the relationship of the group to the government. Some organizations in civil society have much “tighter” connections with the government than others. Organizations such as volunteer fire departments or parent-teacher associations are closely embedded in the governmental structure; these groups work closely with their affiliated bureaucratic department for many years, and expectations of mutual obligation form between the organization and the government. These organizations are quite enduring, and it is difficult for either side to sever the relationship. Similarly, other organizations, such as professional nonprofit agencies that work on a short-term contract basis with the government or advocacy groups that are championing a particular cause, also have relationships with the government, but they are more fleeting. These groups view themselves as highly independent of the government and work with it on a project-to-project basis. There are obligations and expectations on both sides, but they are carefully delimited and do not extend beyond the boundaries of a specific project. It is relatively easy for either side to sever the relationship. In addition to his recognition of tight and loose organizations, Wuthnow has also demonstrated the connection between ideas of citizenship and the prevalence of certain types of organizations. He noticed that people who were active in more traditional, tight organizations also shared similar ideas of what it meant to be a good citizen. They shared common scripts of good citizenship that emphasized service, belonging, and loyalty. In contrast, the loose-organization members, who also tended to be part of younger generations, shared common scripts of good citizenship that emphasized specialization, common interests, and personal relationships. These new ideas of citizenship made it not only acceptable but also admirable to limit obligations to neighbors one did not know and commit oneself to short-term cause organizations and

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stay in touch with friends over the phone rather than through weekly meetings. Ideas of citizenship are key to understanding why people become involved in civic organizations. Wuthnow demonstrated that people strive to be good citizens and their idea of what that is – what their civic responsibility entails – helps determine the ways that they will participate in civil society.

key concepts In my theory of volunteer participation, key concepts include civil society, embedded and nonembedded organizations, volunteering, and norms of civic responsibility. I define civil society as those organizations intermediate between family and state that pursue neither profit within the market nor power within the state as their primary mission.1 These organizations play three vital roles: first, they are the forum in which citizens meet each other to build trust and social capital; second, they act as low-cost service providers supplying necessary public services to meet the needs of community residents; and, third, they act as a pipeline between society and the state, relaying citizen concerns to public officials and public policies to citizens. Although the research presented in this book touches on all three contributions, the emphasis is on the role of civic organizations as mediators between citizens and their government. Civic organizations can engage their government through multiple channels. They can lobby politicians in attempts to influence the legislative process. They can bring class-action or other lawsuits against individuals, corporations, or the government in order to achieve change through the judicial process. Or they can work directly with bureaucrats to influence the making and implementation of policy. In all three avenues of influence, the relationship between civic organizations and the government can be cooperative or conflictual.2 1

2

This definition is quite similar to Schwartz and Pharr 2003, Diamond 1994, p. 5, and others. This definition is intended to capture local voluntary organizations (see D. Smith 2000 for an argument on the importance of these groups) in addition to larger, more formal nonprofit organizations. See Baumgartner and Leech 1998 for an excellent review of the literature on interest groups in the United States – the multiple kinds, their types of activities, and their efficacy.

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Overwhelmingly, the research on civil society thus far has focused on political efforts of civic organizations that target politicians and the legislative process. Scholars have examined the way that civic organizations consolidate the interests of the public and lobby politicians or form mass social movements in order to generate political support for their ideas (Pekkanen 2000; Skocpol, Ganz, and Munson 2000; Tarrow 1998; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995; Walker 1983). An additional line of research examines the ways that civic organizations use the courts to raise their issues to the attention of the public and force policy change. In his pioneering study of gender pay-equity battles in the United States, Michael McCann (1994) found that even when they lost in the courts, feminist organizations were able to use the processes of litigation to create a legal discourse that enhanced mobilization and advanced their cause. Using a comparative framework to place the United States in a broader context, both The Rights Revolution (1998) by Charles Epp and Cause Lawyering (1998) edited by Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold highlight the importance of activist lawyers who strategically utilize legal mobilization in order to further a wide variety of political causes. A third way that civic organizations can influence government policy is by working with the bureaucracy. Many of the organizations that pursue this avenue for their political action are providing social services to the public, and those organizations seek to change the manner or the amount of government provision of services. The vast majority of scholarship in this area concentrates on incorporated, serviceproviding, nonprofit organizations and the ways that their activities are curtailed or encouraged by the government (Kramer 1981; Levy 1999; S. Smith and Lipsky 1993; Wuthnow 1991; Yamamoto 1998). Only a few authors also discuss ways in which the nonprofit and voluntary organizations use these bureaucratic channels to exert influence on the government (Salamon 1995, 1999). Of particular interest to me is the way that voluntary associations utilize these relationships with the bureaucracy to influence policy making and implementation. In the American context, Richard Wood (1997) has shown that churchbased community organizations in Oakland were able to influence key public policy decisions in their communities; they were responsible for policy changes ranging from police reforms to cleaner city parks. In the Japanese context, Eyal Ben-Ari (1991) has demonstrated

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ways that neighborhood associations were successful in their efforts at community action – blocking commercial developments, organizing necessary services for the elderly, and joining together for community festivals. Similarly, recent work by Margarita Estevez-Abe (2003) has illuminated the political role of local volunteer organizations as they participated in the creation and implementation of health and welfare policy. In all cases civic organizations occupy a political space that lies somewhere between citizens and their government. Although this book discusses all three modes of political activity, it is particularly interested in why organizations pursue certain strategies in certain contexts, and how civic organizations effectively utilize connections with the bureaucracy to influence the making and implementation of policy. Within civil society, I posit that organizations fall within a spectrum ranging from those that have close, embedded relationships with the government and those that have more distant relationships. By embedded relationship I mean that the organization has frequent, habitual interactions with the bureaucracy and is directly involved in the policy-making process. Embedded organizations include neighborhood associations, parent-teacher associations (PTA), and volunteer fire departments, to name a few. These organizations are made up primarily of volunteers and may have service missions that are broad (such as neighborhood associations) or narrow (such as volunteer fire departments) and may receive more or less financial support from the government. Common to these organizations is their institutionalized, embedded relationship with the government. Whether this relationship is stipulated by law, as is often the case with volunteer fire departments, or not (neighborhood associations are seldom formally mentioned in city ordinances or national constitutions), these groups have close, ongoing relationships with municipalities or specific government ministries and participate in both the formation and the implementation of policy. In general, these groups tend to pursue policy goals through “internal” political channels – going directly to bureaucrats – rather than by lobbying politicians. As a result, these groups also tend to have more cooperative relationships with the government than organizations not embedded into the government structure. The concept of embedded-nonembedded organization is distinct from the more

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common dichotomies of dependent-independent, formal-informal, professional-volunteer, or membership-advocacy. Volunteer groups that have an embedded relationship with the government can be more or less dependent. Those groups that receive a large proportion of their funding from the government and perform nonessential services are likely to be more dependent on the government (e.g., one that helps a small group of handicapped residents). These groups will have less autonomy in decision making, be less likely to pursue agendas that conflict with the interests of the government, and be more likely to agree to implement requests from the government. Embedded groups that receive a smaller proportion of their funding from the government and perform essential services (e.g., firefighting or garbage removal) are not likely to be very dependent on the government. These groups will have more autonomy in decision making, be more likely to pursue agendas that conflict with the interests of the government, and be less likely to follow requests from the government. Similarly, embedded organizations can be either formal or informal. The groups may have very structured and formal mechanisms specifying membership requirements and duties and clearly articulated modes of interacting with the government (many volunteer fire departments can be described this way). Or the groups may have quite informal membership and mission requirements and may have more ad hoc ways of interacting with the government (some neighborhood associations or PTA groups could be described this way). Likewise, embedded organizations can be professional (with many paid staff employees) or volunteer (with few or no paid staff employees), although in practice the latter are much more common. Finally, embedded volunteer groups may be primarily associational organizations geared toward bringing people together (such as a neighborhood association) or they may be primarily political, advocating on behalf of a particular group or cause (such as environmental advocacy groups). The key feature of distinguishing embedded from nonembedded organizations is the former’s close, institutionalized relationship with some bureaucratic arm of the government and their participation in policy-making and implementation processes. All civil society organizations can be placed on a spectrum, ranging from embedded to nonembedded, so these types should be

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conceptualized as ideal types rather than as strict categories. For example, neighborhood associations are located at the “embedded” end of the spectrum; environmental advocacy organizations could be situated at the “nonembedded” end of the spectrum; and a church group working with the city on a homeless shelter might be somewhere in between. Most organizations lie somewhere in between the two extremes. A social welfare nonprofit group that is organizationally distinct from the government and relies heavily on volunteer labor might appear to be nonembedded. But, if it receives the majority of its funding from the government and has its programmatic decisions made in close consultation with government officials, it may appear more embedded. A professional organization such as the American Medical Association may be primarily nonembedded, but to the extent that it is integrated into the policy-making process, it becomes more embedded. Labor unions might also take on this mixed form. In some countries, such as the United States, labor unions are generally nonembedded; they act as political pressure groups that lobby politicians. In others, such as in Scandinavia and other neocorporatist countries, major policy decisions are made through peak-bargaining institutions that integrate labor into the policy-making process; in these countries, labor unions would be more embedded than they are in countries with different bargaining structures. Finally, religious organizations are generally considered to be nonembedded, since they usually carry out their missions relatively independently of government. However, some countries have religious organizations that are closely affiliated with political parties. This complicates the picture. In some cases, such as the Welfare Party in Turkey ¯ ¯ or the Komeit o¯ (and its affiliated religious organization Sokagakkai) in Japan, the party is closely connected to a religious organization that organizes volunteer labor to distribute social services to the public. These social service organizations may not be directly connected into the bureaucratic decision-making process, but their connections through the political party (which may or may not be part of the governing coalition) makes them more of a mixed-type of organization. They are nonembedded to the extent that they are delivering social services and their organization is focused more on connections with the political party and the legislative process than on the bureaucracy, but

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they are also embedded to the extent that their party has control over or is staffing the bureaucracy, thus linking the organization directly to the bureaucrats. Both embedded and nonembedded organizations can vary in the degree to which they are politicized. Some organizations within civil society, such as book clubs, self-help groups, or alumni associations, might have very little interaction with the state, whereas others such as political advocacy organizations, labor unions, and neighborhood associations act as critical communication pipelines between state and society (see Alexander 1997 for an excellent discussion of the theoretical importance of these differences). Often, no distinction is made in the literature between these different types of organizations and their relationship to the state. In contrast, I conceptualize civil society as having a number of key civic organizations that act as pipelines connecting state and society. Ideas, information, and policies cannot be expected to cross easily from one side to the other; they must pass through the civic associations acting as pipelines across the divide. En route, these ideas, information, and policies may become transformed; they may be denied passage; or they may pass through easily and intact. A process of easy diffusion should not be assumed. I choose to use the word pipeline to describe the role of these organizations because that is the word that several of my interviewees used. In response to questions asking about their relationship to the government, several of the volunteers in different, usually embedded, organizations talked about how they acted “like a pipeline” between residents and governmental authorities. In their minds, by serving as a pipeline, they allowed ideas and information to flow between the two sides, and without the pipeline the ideas could not, or would have difficulty, crossing over to the other side. The pipeline analogy is more accurate than assuming a porous boundary between state and society for a number of reasons. Pipelines are difficult to build, and they require constant maintenance. Old pipelines sometimes corrode and fall into disuse; new pipelines can be built. Societies that have many pipelines will have more ways to communicate with and transform their states than societies with few pipelines. Conversely, states that have many pipelines will have more ways to communicate with and transform their societies than states

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with few pipelines. Finally, social scientists can find a pipeline and study how material moves through it – they do not just have to assume that something leaving the bank of the state lands safely and intact on the society’s side, or vice versa. Although this book discusses civil society in general – all organizations that pursue neither profit within the market nor power within the state as their primary goal – my chief interest is in the smaller number of “pipeline organizations” that connect state and society, particularly those organizations that have embedded relationships with the state. Including embedded organizations explicitly in the study of civil society is particularly important when conducting cross-national research, as is examined more closely in Chapter 2. A third concept important to the theory that follows is volunteering. A person is a volunteer in two meanings of the word. First, the work performed is voluntary in that the person does not receive any monetary payment or payment is only a token amount, not a salary. Second, the work is voluntary in that it is not legally required. These characteristics are easily observable and do not have anything to do with the motivations of the individual. Importantly, no matter whether someone volunteers because of some individual rationale (e.g., he enjoys the activity, he has a special interest in the cause, he wants to make friends) or because of some kind of social rationale (e.g., he thinks that participation is a social responsibility, he was asked to participate), that person is considered a volunteer. There is a strong bias in the literature (and also in the public) that emphasizes the importance of individual motivations of volunteers to determine whether they are “real” volunteers. There is a general understanding that people who engage in more altruistic behavior – for example, where the participator is anonymous, the service is provided for people one does not know, or participation incurs high personal cost for little or no benefit – are somehow more of a “volunteer” than people who donate time and energy for other reasons (e.g., they participate with their boss, they are serving friends or other members of their own community, or they might get a job with the organization).3 3

See Asano and Yamauchi 2001; Ascoli and Cnaan 1997; Chiaki 2001; Nakano 2005; D. Smith 2000; Stevens 1997; as well as the large literature on altruism, for example, Simon 1993; Titmuss 1970.

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However, there are two problems with definitions of volunteers that rely on inner feelings and individual motivations for categorization. First, it is impossible to measure a person’s true inner beliefs. Such measurements invariably rely on survey data that are notoriously unreliable when it comes to gauging motivations. Respondents often give the answer they think will be the most appropriate irrespective of their true motivations. Second, a definition of volunteerism that is dependent on motivational factors is culturally biased. If two people are participating in a clean-up-the-neighborhood effort and both are picking up trash for free, they both should be “counted” as volunteers. From my perspective, just because the first person thinks that a clean environment is important and that is why she is volunteering and the second person thinks that she needs to participate because it is expected of her as a resident in the neighborhood does not make the first person more of a “volunteer” than the second person. So long as both people are working for free and neither is required to participate, they both “count” as volunteers. When comparing cross-nationally, it is important not to privilege individualistic motivations for participation over social motivations because certain kinds of motivations are likely to be more prevalent in different cultural contexts. This issue is discussed in greater length in Chapter 2. Although I often use civic organizations and volunteer organizations interchangeably throughout the book, they are distinct concepts. Civic organizations are all organizations that fit within the preceding definition of civil society – those organizations intermediate between family and state that pursue neither profit within the market nor power within the state as their primary mission. Civic organizations include a wide range of organizations: mass mailing organizations that have only paid staff and no volunteers, book clubs that have members but perform no volunteer service, all-volunteer social welfare organizations that serve the handicapped. Volunteer organizations are that subset of civic organizations that have unpaid members that perform services for others. Although associational organizations such as book clubs are voluntary in that their membership is not mandatory, their members are not volunteering because they are not performing a service for others. Therefore, purely associational organizations are not treated as volunteer organizations

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in this book. However, the distinction between associational organizations and volunteer organizations becomes blurred in some cases, such as the Boy Scouts or YMCA, where members may be receiving as well as providing services simultaneously. In these blurred cases, unless there are compelling reasons to eschew the term volunteer, I will also include these groups in the volunteer organization category. Finally, I define what I mean by norms of civic responsibility. A norm of civic responsibility is a general understanding among community residents of what an individual is expected to contribute to the community in order to be a citizen of good standing. Norms are social constructs that change over time. They are sustained and modified through the practices of individuals who adhere (and violate) them. Norms are often used in discourses to pressure individuals or governments into conforming to certain expectations (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Newton 1997; North, 1990; Sikkink 1991). Norms of civic responsibility refer to those social norms that dictate appropriate civic behavior, informing individuals of the kinds of participation that they are expected to perform for their communities. These norms cannot cause a person to participate, but they shape the social context in which individuals make decisions about whether to participate and the kinds of activities in which they become involved (Bellah et al. 1985; Greenberg 1998; Wuthnow 1998). The theory developed here articulates the links between norms of civic responsibility, volunteering behavior, and civil society.

a theory of volunteer participation The aim of this book is to explain both the rates and types of volunteer participation in a community. The rate of participation is a function of the practices of state and societal institutions, and the type of participation is a function of citizen ideas of governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems. Practices are the means through which communities build, maintain, and transmit norms of civic responsibility. Thus, communities where governmental and societal institutions have practices that support norms of civic participation through volunteering, rates of volunteering will be high. In contrast, in communities where the practices

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are not supportive, volunteering rates will be lower. Some of these practices may come directly from institutions, such as the practice of conferring special legal status and government recognition on certain types of volunteers. Other practices may not stem directly from a legal institution, such as showcasing volunteer contributions during annual festivals or recruiting volunteers through social connections with family and school friends. As discussed in Chapter 3, institutional structures such as a community-supported volunteer center can help promote volunteer participation but are not sufficient to explain variation in participation patterns; the practices of institutions are also critically important. If the volunteer center actively engages with the full range of embedded and nonembedded organizations, bringing together the leadership of different organizations with the city officials responsible for community development to work on joint projects, then participation rates in that community are likely to be very high. In contrast, another community with an institutionally similar volunteer center would likely have much lower levels of participation if the practices of that center are exclusive to only certain types of groups or do not facilitate coordination among organizations and the government in the development and implementation of new projects. Although both the decision to volunteer and the decision about where to volunteer are often made simultaneously, it may be heuristically helpful to conceptualize the process as occurring in two stages: first an individual decides whether to volunteer (which then affects the rate of volunteering in his community) and then he decides where to volunteer (which affects the types of organizations prevalent in the community). The practices of governmental and societal institutions, discussed previously, determine the rate of volunteering in a community – the first decision of the individual. Community ideas about the responsibility of individuals and the government to deal with social problems determine the type of volunteering prevalent in a community – the second decision of the individual. The theory developed here is at the community – not the individual – level of analysis. However, this heuristic device that separates out the two kinds of decisions made by a volunteer may be helpful for understanding the relationship between the processes influencing the rates and types of volunteering in a community.

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Utilizing the state-in-society approach described earlier, I expect the idea that citizens have of the appropriate role of the government and individuals in dealing with social problems to affect the types of civic organizations prevalent in a given community. In particular, in communities where citizens think that the government should be responsible for dealing with social problems, they will join embedded organizations that work with the government to address these problems. In a community where citizens think that the government should deal with social problems, organizations with close, embedded relationships with the government will be viewed as engaging in a legitimate activity and will garner volunteer support. Furthermore, because in this context it is accepted that the government will be involved in all manner of social issues, the scope of governmental authority – a highly political issue – will be of less concern to citizens and their organizations than the form and content of government involvement, which is more of an administrative issue. When administrative rather than political issues predominate, it is more effective for civic organizations to become embedded in the policy-making and implementation process, so they can have a say in the content and direction of policies and guide the ways that the policies are executed (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Kingdon 1984). In contrast, I hypothesize that when citizens think that individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems, organizations that are not embedded in the government will be more prevalent in the community. In this context, organizations that rely primarily on the efforts of private individuals will be considered to be legitimate and engaged in productive activities. Furthermore, political, rather than administrative, issues will likely predominate, leading the organizations to employ more overtly political methods of influencing agendas by contacting politicians through lobbying, mass mobilization, or court battles rather than through the internal channels to bureaucrats favored by embedded organizations. These two ideas are not necessarily opposed to one another. It is possible for members of a community to think that both the government and private individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems. In such a case both embedded organizations that work closely with the government and nonembedded ones that work more independently can flourish. However, the two ideas could be in

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opposition. A community might think that the government and not private individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems. In this case, I would expect there to be more embedded organizations than nonembedded organizations. The reverse should also hold. If a community thinks that private individuals and not the government should be responsible for social problems, then I would expect the community to have many nonembedded organizations and few embedded ones. Practices can reinforce the ideas that citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility if they support volunteer organizations consistent with that idea. If a community has an idea of governmental responsibility, and the governmental and social institutions have practices supporting community organizations that have embedded ties with the government, then the idea will be reinforced and participation rates in embedded organizations will remain high. However, if a community has an idea of governmental responsibility, but the practices of the local government or other social organizations reduce their support of embedded organizations, perhaps giving more support to nonembedded groups, then the idea of state responsibility will be undermined and will eventually adjust to be more compatible with the practices of state and society. Likewise, the feedback mechanism can work in the opposite direction. If the ideas citizens have of governmental and individual responsibility change, the practices may adjust accordingly. One example of how practices can reinforce ideas, creating wide divergences in volunteering behavior can be found in Levi’s account of war mobilization in Canada. According to Levi, “At the crux of the conscription controversy during both world wars was the question of what constituted loyalty to Canada” (1997, p. 150). For English Canadians, Canada was firmly part of the British Empire, so if Britain was at war, it was their responsibility to support the war and enlist. In contrast, Francophones did not consider Canada to be an immigrant colony of Britain, so their loyalties lay with Canada but not with Britain. These two different ideas of their responsibilities as citizens were reinforced by the divergent practices of key social institutions. In Anglophone Canada, the militia tradition was strong and communities supported enlistment efforts with white-feather campaigns, speaker

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bureaus, and organized efforts to pressure potential recruits. Not so in Quebec. The French Catholic Church, while giving verbal support to the war effort, was not supportive in its practices – it published articles and sent pastoral letters questioning the legitimacy of the English Canadian authority. Nationalist leaders were equally disparaging, calling those in the military “fools.” The result was a vast difference in volunteering rates. While 30.1 percent of British Canadians volunteered for military service, only 4.3 percent of French Canadians did (Levi 1997, pp. 139–164). In this way, divergent ideas of citizen responsibilities were reinforced by divergent practices of key social institutions, leading to wide disparities in volunteering rates by the two communities. Ideas can also change, forcing adjustments in the practices of state and social institutions. This was the case for many Japanese communities as they responded to the 1995 earthquake in Kobe. Traditionally, Japanese have had a fairly strong idea of government responsibility; they expected the government to care for society and their responsibility as citizens was to assist the government in that role. This idea had been slowly eroding as society had become more complex and social problems such as rapidly aging problem and youth delinquency had been rising (Iokibe 1999). The Kobe earthquake and the relief and reconstruction effort that followed, however, led to a shift in citizen ideas of governmental and individual responsibility. The earthquake killed more than 6,000 people and some residents were without key services such as gas and water for months. An estimated 1.2 million volunteers from across the country poured into the area in the aftermath to volunteer in the relief effort. The failure of the government to deal with the problems and the heroic acts of the volunteers led to a shift in public understanding of state and individual responsibility for dealing with disasters. The idea citizens had of the state’s role in society shifted from one where the state had primary responsibility for disaster recovery efforts to one where private individuals were expected to take greater initiative in disaster recovery efforts (Nakata 1996). After the earthquake, many communities across Japan altered the practices of their governmental and social institutions, directing more support toward nongovernmental organizations that operated more independently from government (Yamauchi 1999). Japan also changed its legal structure, passing the Nonprofit

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Organization Law (NPO Law) in 1998 to ease the incorporation of these kinds of nongovernmental organizations. Ideas take a long time to change, however, and as post-Kobe earthquake Japan illustrates, volunteer patterns are often very enduring. Japan’s ideas about individual responsibility had shifted – private volunteer organizations were springing up all over (in the six years following the NPO Law, 16,160 organizations had incorporated),4 but Japanese ideas of governmental responsibility remained strong. The time after the Kobe earthquake did see an upsurge in the number of people volunteering for nonembedded organizations, but this increase was not the result of volunteers shifting their efforts from embedded to nonembedded organizations. Embedded organizations remained very strong and, in some cases, saw their numbers increase as they found new and innovative ways to reach out to their communities; for example, the volunteer fire department in Kashihara reacted to the nearby Kobe earthquake by expanding its fire prevention and educational activities and nearly doubling the number of its volunteer firefighters.5 The embedded organizations such as neighborhood associations and volunteer fire departments have retained high levels of volunteer participation, while the new nonembedded organizations have continued to focus on traditional activities. Among the newly incorporated nonprofit organizations, 67 percent are involved in the traditional activities of health and social welfare; neighborhood development (machi dsukuri) is the second most popular activity, with 33.2 percent representation. Groups that focus on issues such as human rights and peace activist organizations are much less common; only 9.5 percent of nonprofits listed those as part of their mission.6 The story of wartime Canada has illustrated the important ways that practices can reinforce the ideas that citizens have about governmental and individual responsibility, leading to dramatically different rates 4

5 6

Keizai Kikakuchou (Economic Planning Office), Kokumin Seikatsu Hakusho (White Paper on the National Lifestyle) (2004), chart 3–1-9: http://www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/ whitepaper/h16/01 zu/zu301090.html (Japanese) (8/11/05). Kashihara is discussed in greater detail in Chapters 3 and 4. The full story of the expansion of its volunteer fire department can be found in Henshukyoku 2000. A total of 663 organizations participated in the survey conducted in September 1999. Note that, when answering the survey, organizations were able to select up to three activities, so the totals for all thirteen categories do not add up to 100 percent. Keizai Kikakuchou 2001, p. 136.

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and types of volunteer participation between Anglo- and Francophone Canadians. The story of the response to the Kobe earthquake in Japan has illustrated the ways that shifting ideas can change the practices of governmental and societal institutions. However, the Kobe story has simultaneously highlighted how enduring patterns of volunteer participation can be; the Kobe earthquake disaster caused Japanese to think that individuals and nonembedded organizations should have a greater role in civil society, but it did not alter their strong belief that the government and embedded organizations should continue to play a major role as well. Summary of Hypotheses Types of Volunteer Participation r Communities in which citizens have an idea of governmental responsibility – where they believe that the government should be responsible for dealing with social problems – will tend to have more volunteer organizations that have embedded relationships with the government. r Communities in which citizens have an idea of individual responsibility – where they believe that private individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems – will tend to have more volunteer organizations that do not have embedded relationships with the government. Rates of Volunteer Participation r Communities in which the practices of governmental and social institutions are supportive of volunteer organizations will have high rates of volunteer participation. r Communities in which the practices of governmental and social institutions are not supportive of volunteer organizations will have low rates of volunteer participation.

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2 Patterns of Participation Volunteering around the World

Studies of comparative civil society tell a consistent story about volunteer participation in advanced democracies: the United States is always at or near the top of the pack, Japan trails in the rear, and European countries such as Britain and France occupy the space in the middle. This is true whether the studies examine participation using survey data, such as the World Values Surveys, or whether they consider organizational size and participation levels in nonprofit organizations, such as the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project. If these studies are accurate – that Americans belong to “a nation of joiners” (Schlesinger 1944) and Japanese do not – then why does Japan have more than twice as many volunteer firefighters and more than four times as many parentteacher association (PTA) members as the United States?1 This chapter argues that current studies of comparative civil society have been systematically biased in favor of the types of participation found commonly in the United States and against those commonly found in Japan. In particular, studies have not picked up participation in organizations with close, embedded relationships with the government such as PTAs or neighborhood associations that are prevalent in Japan. Because Japan is not the only country where this kind of underrepresented participation is prevalent – people in Spain and Germany volunteer in patterns similar to Japanese – new conceptualizations of 1

See note 1 in the Introduction.

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civil society are necessary in order to understand participation patterns around the world. This chapter begins by comparing volunteering rates in the United States and Japan to demonstrate the high level of volunteering in Japan and to identify the distinct patterns of volunteer participation in the two countries. I then theorize about why these patterns exist. In the third section I test the hypothesis that volunteering patterns in a country are a function of citizen attitudes toward governmental and individual responsibility, using data collected from eight volunteer organizations in sixty-eight countries around world. This section also tests alternative explanations for variation in volunteer participation, such as level of education, income, and urbanization. I conclude the chapter with some observations about the implications of these findings for the study of comparative civil society and democracy.

volunteer participation in the united states and japan Table 2.1 lists a number of organizations that are active in the United States and Japan, with their per capita rate of participation and gross membership. The membership figures are from the most recent available data (the oldest are from 2000 and the newest from 2004 – a full list of data sources can be found in Appendix B). As Table 2.1 indicates, Japanese do not volunteer less than Americans; they may in fact volunteer more. Certainly, they volunteer differently. The organizations are listed alphabetically, but there is a clear pattern to the types of organizations preferred by each country. Japanese have comparatively higher participation in those organizations that have embedded relationships with the government, whereas Americans have comparatively higher participation in those organizations that do not. By embedded relationship I mean that the organization has frequent, habitual interactions with the bureaucracy and engages in the policymaking process with bureaucrats. Embedded organizations include neighborhood associations, PTA groups, and volunteer fire departments, to name a few. These organizations are made up primarily of volunteers and may have service missions that are broad (such as

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Patterns of Participation

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table 2.1. Volunteer Participation in the United States and Japan for Selected Organizations Organization Amnesty International Greenpeace Labor unions Lions Club Parent-Teacher Association Red Cross Rotary Club Scouts (Boy, Girl, etc.) Seniors’ associationsa Volunteer firefighters Women’s associations YMCA total

United States

Japan

1.06 (300,000) 0.89 (250,000) 57.05 (16.1 million) 1.55 (437,887) 21.26 (6 million) 41.46 (11.7 million) 1.39 (391,072) 22.11 (6,239,435) 69.09 (19.5 million) 2.84 (800,050) 1.82 (500,000) 62.18 (17,549,364)

0.05 (6,461) 0.04 (4,500) 87.49 (11.1 million) 1.07 (135,285) 86.61(11 million) 167.10 (21.2 million) 0.84 (106,628) 1.74 (220,223) 68.93 (8.7 million) 7.29 (919,105) 39.41 (5 million) 0.90 (114,256)

282.692 (79,767,808)

461.15 (58,506,458)

Note: The per capita rate of participation (number of members times 1,000 per total population) is given first with the gross membership in parentheses. a The figures are the number of members older than sixty-five because the seniors’ associations (rojinkai) in Japan begin membership at age sixty-five. Total AARP membership is 35 million.

neighborhood associations) or narrow (such as volunteer fire departments) and may receive more or less financial support from the government. Common among these organizations is their institutionalized, embedded relationship with the government. Whether or not this relationship is stipulated by law, these groups have close ongoing relationships with municipalities or specific government ministries and participate in both the formation and the implementation of policy. In general, these groups tend to pursue policy goals by using “internal” political channels – going directly to bureaucrats – rather than by lobbying politicians. Volunteer groups with similar names or functions may be quite different in the extent to which they are embedded depending on their context. For example, seniors’ organizations are quite different in the United States and Japan. In the United States, the AARP (formerly called the American Association for Retired Persons) is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in Washington. It has a total membership of

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35 million people, 1,860 full-time staff members nationwide (1,200 in Washington, D.C., alone), and annual revenues of nearly $600 million. It was formed in 1958 for the purpose of promoting the interests of older people. Although AARP does have local branch offices (there are 3,100 independent chapters), they are minuscule compared to the total membership. Most AARP members pay their dues and receive their newsletter. Many sign up for various benefits, such as low-cost insurance and discounts at certain retailers; they do not gather together on a regular basis to chat, go on hikes, or make crafts.2 Japan’s equivalent of AARP, Zenkoku Rojin Kurabu Rengokai (Japan Federation of Senior Citizens’ Clubs), could not be more different. Although it has an office in Tokyo, it has essentially no full-time staff members and a budget of only $2 million. In contrast to AARP, which was formed and has existed primarily as an advocacy organization, JFSCC was formed in 1950 as the national representative of thousands of smaller seniors’ clubs that met weekly or even more often for outings, activities, and fellowship. These organizations are primarily involved in associational activities. When they do become involved in politics, rather than lobby at the national level, they become directly involved with local bureaucrats in policy making and implementation on issues involving seniors. In contrast to AARP’s 3,100 local chapters, JFSCC has 133,219 independent clubs with a membership of 8.7 million people.3 In addition to differences in the extent to which they are embedded, organizations may also vary in the extent to which they are politically involved. Many groups are not particularly involved in politics. Associational groups such as book clubs and alumni groups are often more interested in bringing people together than advocating on behalf of a particular cause. Other organizations that attract volunteers might be primarily geared toward service delivery, such as a neighborhood soup kitchen or a hospital, so political activity might be only a peripheral part of their work. Finally, for some groups political advocacy on behalf of a particular group of people or a cause is their primary 2

3

Figures are from the AARP Fact Sheet: http://www.aarp.org/leadership/Articles/a200212-18-aarpfactsheet.html (10/23/05) and from telephone conversations with the AARP research department. Zenkoku Rojin Kurabu Rengokai (Japan Federation of Senior Citizens’ Club): http://www4.ocn.ne.jp/∼zenrou/ (1/05/06) (Japanese).

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Political Organizations

PTAs

Embedded Organizations

Labor Unions (Japan)

Labor Unions (US)

NOW Greenpeace (US-women) Amnesty AARP International (US-seniors)

Chifuren (Japan-women) Red Cross

Rojinkai Volunteer (Japan-seniors) Fire Departments

Lions Club Rotary Club

Nonembedded Organizations

Boy Scouts

Apolitical Organizations figure 2.1. Volunteer Organizations in the United States and Japan.

mission – these groups can be either embedded (e.g., a neighborhood association) or not embedded (e.g., Greenpeace). Plotting the different organizations listed in Table 2.1 according to these two dimensions – their embeddedness and politicization – highlights the different volunteering patterns in the United States and Japan. As Figure 2.1 illustrates, Japanese have much higher rates of participation in embedded organizations than their counterparts in the United States. Furthermore, when similar groups take different organizational forms in the two countries, they tend to be embedded in Japan and not embedded in the United States (e.g., seniors’ associations, women’s associations, labor unions).

revisiting the literature on civil society in japan If Japan has such high rates of volunteering in embedded organizations, why does it always come in last in comparative studies of civil society? This section revisits the literature on comparative civil society to investigate this discrepancy between the empirical reality of high levels of volunteer participation in Japan but scholarly findings of low

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participation rates. The most comprehensive study of comparative civil society has been conducted by the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, led by Lester Salamon at Johns Hopkins University. Its first major publication was Global Civil Society (1999). Drawing on research collected by teams from around the world, the book provides a systematic and detailed country-by-country analysis of the nonprofit sector in twenty-two countries in Europe, North and South America, Asia, and the Middle East. The authors closely examine the relative size, types of activities, funding sources, and employment (paid versus volunteer) structure of the nonprofit sector in each country. This massive research project is generating important new empirical data and changing the way comparative scholars view civil society around the world. However, the research is specifically focused on the nonprofit sector as a sector in the economy, and thus it places emphasis on the economic influence of the sector – how many employees it has, how large its revenues are, and the economic (full-time-equivalent) contributions of volunteers. Because the project is attempting to be rigorous in its definition and measurement of the nonprofit sector around the world, small, local organizations with entirely volunteer staff are often not included. Also, differences in legal definitions of organization status and national data collection methods caused some problems, particularly in accurately representing nonprofit organizations in Japan.4 Organizations included in the study were classified into twelve “fields of nonprofit activity”: culture, education and research, health, social services, environment, development, civic and advocacy, philanthropy, international, religious congregations, business and professional and unions, and other (Salamon 1999, p. 7). Most embedded organizations (e.g., neighborhood organizations or volunteer fire departments) are difficult to classify under this schema because they fall in between categories, so participation in these types of organizations has often been overlooked or underrepresented. In the authors’ ranking of countries by the size of their nonprofit sector including volunteer 4

Salamon et al. 1999 says in an appendix on data collection that the sources relied upon in Japan “focus on corporations providing public goods and services, while seriously underreporting purely voluntary associations” (p. 492). See Yamamoto 1998, pp. 152– 170, for a detailed description of the data included in the Nonprofit Sector Research Project studies.

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labor, the Netherlands is ranked first, the United States is third, and Japan trails in twelfth place out of sixteen countries.5 In contrast to the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project’s emphasis on nonprofit organizations, the World Values Surveys project concentrates more on civic associations and citizen attitudes toward government and one another. The methodology of this project is different, relying on survey rather than membership data. Furthermore, the surveys are more interested in capturing the beliefs and practices of citizens around the world than in trying to document the actual size of the voluntary sector. The surveys ask specifically about participation in organizations such as churches, sports clubs, and unions rather than volunteer work for incorporated nonprofit organizations or smaller, embedded organizations. In a seminal 1992 study using the 1990 World Values Surveys, James Curtis and associates did a series of statistical analyses on the data to test whether the United States could be characterized as “a nation of joiners” when compared to other countries, and they attempted to identify reasons for why citizens in different countries joined more or less. They found that the United States was clearly at the top of the fifteen countries studied when no controls were used in the analysis, but its relative rank changed when churches and unions were excluded, although it still remained among the top group of countries. Likewise, Japan was at or near the bottom of the group of countries in terms of associational membership, no matter which model was used (Curtis, Grabb, and Baer 1992). Although the World Values Survey captures a different aspect of volunteer participation than the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, it also overlooks and obscures the importance of embedded organizations. The World Values Survey asks respondents if they are active or inactive members or if they do not belong to the following groups: church or religious organizations, sport or recreation organizations, art or music or educational organizations, labor unions, political parties, environmental organizations, professional associations, charitable organizations, or any other voluntary organizations (Inglehart et al. 5

Salamon 1999, p. 134. Ranking is the nonprofit sectors’ proportion (paid and in-kind employment) of the nonagricultural labor force in 1995.

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2000).6 As with the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project, none of these categories seek to elicit responses from members of embedded volunteer organizations. For the most part, the only place for volunteers in the plethora of these types of organizations to record their participation is in the “other” category. Both the Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project and the World Values Surveys are generating valuable empirical data – I use much of it in this book. My intention here is not to criticize these projects for failing to capture the whole of civil society; I am very doubtful that any single research project could do so. My main purpose is to caution scholars who are using these important data resources from assuming that these studies represent the whole of civil society. I want to underscore that the associations missing from these studies are not just a random assortment of groups, which might increase an error term in a statistical analysis but would not affect the legitimacy of general findings. Overlooking embedded volunteer organizations in comparative studies of civil society has created a systematic bias in favor of certain types of organizations, in particular, the types of organizations that are found in the United States, and a bias against the types of organizations found in many other countries in the world, Japan in particular. This bias results in the incorrect finding that Japan (and countries with similar volunteering patterns) have weak and underdeveloped civil societies, when, in fact, their civil societies may be equally well developed and just taking on a different shape. Unfortunately, the research on civil society in Japan has not rectified the misperceptions encouraged by the comparative research projects. Scholarship concerned with civil society in Japan can generally be categorized into three groups. The first group comprises mostly anthropologists and historians who seek to describe and explain one organization or community in Japan, illuminating the unique role of volunteer groups in Japanese society and culture but with little reference to a broader comparative context (e.g., Ben-Ari 1991; Bestor 1989; Dore 1958, 1978; Garon 1997; LeBlanc 1999; Nakano 2005; Stevens 1997). 6

In the 2000 surveys, the questions ask whether individuals are “members” or “nonmembers” and/or do voluntary work for the same listing of groups.

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The second group consists largely of political scientists and sociologists who examine Japan but frame their main questions within a comparative framework: Why is Japan’s civil society so weak compared with those of other advanced democracies, and how is civil society in Japan changing? Edited volumes by Tadashi Yamamoto (1998, 1999), Stephen Osborne (2003), and Frank Schwartz and Susan Pharr (2003) fall into this category. In all three volumes, contributors operate from the implicit, or sometimes explicit, assumption that volunteerism and civic involvement are limited in Japan and that this limitation is largely due to historical and legal constraints. Even chapters that focus on areas of rising activism highlight the ways in which these constraints persist into the present time. Finally, a third group of scholars is investigating Japan’s civil society from the perspective of its role in public policy. Frank Schwartz (1998) highlights the role of shingikai, advisory councils, in making public policy, and Patricia Maclachlan (2000) examines the give-and-take among national and local actors with respect to information disclosure policies. While both authors acknowledge the preeminence of state actors, they take great care to highlight the ways that citizen organizations also influence the policy-making process. More specifically in the realm of social welfare, Mutsuko Takahashi and Raija Hashimoto (1997), Roger Goodman (1998), and Margarita Estevez-Abe (2003) all investigate the important role that volunteer welfare commissioners play in providing social services in conjunction with governmental providers. As with their counterparts in history and anthropology, these authors are primarily concerned with explaining the processes in Japan rather than trying to generalize to other countries. Two Japanese authors have written more theoretical contributions to the discussion about the role of volunteers in society. Okamoto Masahiro (1997) presents a model in which a core of necessary social services is offered by the state and a periphery of services – those desired by, but not critically necessary to, the public – is offered by the private, nonprofit sector. He argues that, as society comes to expect more and more services, gradually both concentric circles of the public and the private sphere expand outward, offering more and more services to the public. Takayori Shouzou (1996) writes about the public-private interactions in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake in the 1995. He

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conceptualizes social services in a two-by-two table in which one dimension ranges from individual to corporate (actors) and the other from public to private (benefit). Family and volunteers occupy the individual-private quadrant, nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations are in the individual-public quadrant, local and national government are in the corporate-public quadrant, and for-profit companies occupy the corporate-private quadrant. He then describes a range of social service needs, indicates which quadrant they fall into, and speculates which type of organizations should fulfill those needs. Both of these authors, and especially Takayori, have useful and generalizable theories about the roles of volunteers and their relationship to the state. Unfortunately, these works have been published only in Japanese, so their audience has been limited. In this way the comparative literature on civil society has largely omitted the importance of embedded volunteer groups, creating a systematic bias that overrepresents volunteer participation in the United States while underrepresenting volunteer participation in countries, such as Japan, where embedded groups are prevalent. Scholars who could have pointed out and rectified this bias, students of Japan’s civil society, have not done so. These scholars have tended to focus on civic organizations’ role in Japanese society and public service delivery rather than comparing those organizations to similar ones found around the world, and those that do refer to other countries have been preoccupied with trying to explain why Japan’s civil society is so weak compared to that of other countries or why it is currently growing (from its weak condition).7

explaining patterns of participation Having observed a pattern in volunteer participation rates between the United States and Japan, I now turn toward explaining those 7

The only exception to this pattern that I have found is nearly thirty years old – Azumi 1974. She did not conduct a systematic study of Japanese organizations, but she highlighted the existence and active participation of Volunteer Welfare Commissioners, Social Welfare Councils, and local groups to help the handicapped and the elderly, as well as volunteers for the Red Cross and YMCA. She challenged nonprofit scholars to take a broader perspective when examining volunteering and civil society around the world.

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patterns. This section asks a generalized version of the question raised at the beginning of the chapter: why do some countries have more volunteers in embedded organizations while other countries have fewer volunteers in that type of organization? I begin by developing two hypotheses to explain the observed variation in volunteering patterns between the United States and Japan. I then test these hypotheses using volunteering data from around the world. I include common alternative explanations for participation rates, such as education, income, and urbanization, in the analyses. Several studies examining regional variation in volunteerism and size of the nonprofit sector in the United States have revealed that political culture may be influencing volunteering behavior in those areas. Wolfgang Bielefeld and his colleagues have suggested that certain regions in the United States have a greater propensity to invest community resources into nonprofit and volunteer efforts and therefore have more of these organizations (Bielefeld 2000; Bielefeld and Corbin 1996). However, these authors do not attempt to identify what element of political culture causes this variation, nor do they test their hypotheses outside the United States. I hypothesize that citizen attitudes about governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems help determine the types of organizations that are most prevalent in a community. Note that this hypothesis does not predict anything about the rates of volunteering – it assumes that some exogenous factor has induced volunteer participation and is focused only on predicting the types of organizations that will be prevalent in a community. Chapter 4 will explain variation in community rates of volunteering. When communities believe that the government should be responsible for dealing with social problems, they are likely to form and to join organizations that work with the government to accomplish this aim. These organizations that work closely with the government to alleviate social problems will be considered to be legitimate and engaged in productive activities. In contrast, when communities think that individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems, they are likely to form and to join organizations that are not embedded in the government. In this context, organizations that rely primarily on the efforts of private individuals are considered to be legitimate and engaged in productive activities.

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Note that these two hypotheses are not necessarily in opposition to one another. The examples presented thus far suggest that in countries where citizens think that the government should be responsible for dealing with social problems, citizens also think that individuals should not be responsible for dealing with social problems, leading to many embedded organizations and few nonembedded organizations (e.g., Japan). Or, in countries where citizens think that individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems, they also think that government should not be responsible for these problems, leading to participation in nonembedded organizations and not in embedded ones (e.g., the United States). However, theoretically speaking, there is no reason why citizens in a country might not think that both government and individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems, a situation that would lead to participation in both embedded and nonembedded organizations. Finland is an example of such a country, and that case will be explored in greater detail in Chapter 6. These attitudes can be expressed in two hypotheses: r Hypothesis 1: Countries in which citizens think that the government should be responsible for dealing with social problems will tend to have more volunteer participation in embedded organizations. r Hypothesis 2: Countries in which citizens think that individuals should be responsible for dealing with social problems will tend to have more volunteer participation in organizations that do not have embedded relationships with the government. To test these two hypotheses I use data collected from eight different organizations that are active around the world. Three of the organizations – parent-teacher associations, the Red Cross, and volunteer fire departments – are embedded organizations with close relationships with particular government bureaucracies. Their embeddedness is determined by their institutional relationship with the government. Five of the organizations – Greenpeace, Lions Clubs International, Rotary Clubs International, Scouting International, and the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) – have missions and organizational structures that are explicitly independent of the government, without embedded ties to bureaucratic agencies. Per capita membership rates in these organizations constitute the dependent variables

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in the following analysis. Greater explanation about the classification of organizations can be found in Appendix A, which discusses the methodology in more detail; source information is in Appendix B. The independent variable – citizen attitudes toward governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems – is measured using data from the 2000 World Values (WVS) and European Values Surveys (EVS). I argued earlier that these surveys were not well designed to capture the total quantity of volunteers in a country because of the limited number of groups listed in the questions. The surveys, designed primarily to capture citizen attitudes, may not correctly identify whether an individual volunteers for his local fire department; however, they should correctly record that person’s attitude toward government. Therefore, while not perfect, these surveys are a good way of gauging the prevalence of certain attitudes within particular countries. In addition to the variable that I think should account for variation in volunteering patterns – citizen attitudes toward governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems – there are several alternative explanations for variation in volunteering rates that I will test alongside my favored explanatory variable. Scholars who research variation in volunteer participation can be divided into two groups. The first group looks primarily to individual characteristics to explain variation in volunteer participation rates and the second group looks to collective characteristics to explain the same variation. The first group of scholars is primarily concerned with explaining changes in volunteer participation in the United States over the past half century. These scholars vary widely on their prognoses. Robert Putnam (2000) documents the extensive decline of participation; Everett Ladd (1999) documents the extensive rise in participation; Robert Wuthnow (1998) and Theda Skocpol (2003) suggest that some kinds of participation are declining while others are rising. Although these scholars vary in their diagnosis of the health of civil society in the United States, they all agree on the set of characteristics that determine an individual’s propensity to volunteer. In particular, higher income and education levels increase the likelihood that an individual will be civically engaged. The findings on the influence of dual-income families (i.e., working women) are more mixed; some

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studies find that having two income earners in the family decreases leisure time, whereas others find that women involved in the work force are more likely than their stay-at-home counterparts to join and participate in professional associations and other forms of civic organizations.8 These studies have identified a number of variables that predict variations in volunteer participation. However, authors often assume that volunteering is purely a function of individual motivations, so variation in individual-level factors should translate perfectly into collectivelevel variation. These assumptions have two problems. First, ecological correlations do not necessarily have a positive relationship with individual-level correlations for purely mathematical reasons. Second, there can be collective-level factors that influence ecological patterns independent of, or in conjunction with, individual effects. As Robinson (1950, p. 354) has demonstrated in his classic article on the problems of drawing collective-level conclusions from individuallevel data, “there need be no correspondence between the individual correlation and the ecological correlation.” Through a careful mathematical proof, Robinson shows his readers that there are an infinite number of individual correlations that could correspond with any given ecological correlation. The differences were not only in magnitude but could even be in sign. To give an example of how factors that predict individual volunteering rates may not correctly predict collective volunteering rates for purely mathematical reasons, imagine two communities each with a population of ten people. In community A, one person earns $1,000 a week while the other nine earn nothing. In community B all ten people earn $90 a week. Therefore, community A’s average income is higher than community B’s ($100 compared to $90). Given these data, it is quite possible for two statements to be simultaneously true: (1) richer people volunteer more than poorer people, and (2) richer communities volunteer less than poorer communities. Thus, for purely mathematical reasons, ecological relationships between variables may be quite

8

For an excellent review of the literature on characteristics that promote volunteer participation in individuals, see D. Smith (1994), which examines contextual social background, personality, attitude, and situational variables. D. Smith (2000) also provides a number of very detailed literature reviews of work on volunteering.

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different than a simple aggregation of the individual-level variables would lead one to expect. In addition to simple properties of mathematics that confound individual and ecological relationships, contextual factors may also cause community-level variation. The influence of social factors is likely to be particularly important for volunteering. As Adam Przeworski (1974, p. 30) asserts in his seminal article on contextual models, “Social context has an effect on the behavior of an individual if two conditions obtain: (1) interaction takes place, and (2) this interaction is effective in converting either of the participants.” These conditions are clearly present in volunteering since the activity by its very nature involves social interaction, not only with clients but often with other volunteers as well. Thus, there is a high possibility that social context could affect volunteering behavior. Indeed, one set of scholars does utilize collective characteristics to explain variations in volunteer behavior. The empirical findings for these examinations are more mixed than those for the individual-level effects. One contextual effect that has been studied is the effect of rural versus urban contexts on volunteering behavior. Several studies have found that rural people and those who live in smaller, close-knit communities are more likely to volunteer than those in urban cities (Gamm and Putnam 1999; Oliver 2000), but others have found no significant difference in the volunteering rates (Lesk and Zippel 1975; Steblay 1987). Another collective effect that has been extensively studied is the influence of government policy on the numbers of nonprofit organizations and volunteers. Lester Salamon’s Partners in Public Service (1995) and Steven Rathgeb Smith and Michael Lipsky’s Nonprofits for Hire (1993) both find that there has been extensive government-private sector cooperation in the delivery of public services. While Salamon takes a more historical perspective and Smith and Lipsky examine the contemporary situation more closely, they both reveal the heavy reliance of the nonprofit sector on government funding. They demonstrate that there has been a positive relationship between government funding and the scope and size of the nonprofit sector (and their associated volunteers). Roger Kemp’s edited volume, Privatization (1991), comes to the opposite conclusion. Through an examination of many different service areas, from garbage collection to firefighting services,

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the authors argue that increased government involvement and professionalized staff can “crowd out” private organizations and volunteers from providing public and social services. I utilize World Development Indicators collected by the World Bank for the year 2000 to measure most of these alternative variables. The following regressions (see Tables 2.2 and 2.3) include my choice independent variable – citizen attitudes about governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems – with all of the alternative explanatory variables (education, income, working women, government spending, and urbanization) and control variables where applicable. They test how well each of the variables explains the crossnational variation in eight different organizations found around the world. I was able to collect data for more than twenty countries for only three of the groups: Scouting International, YMCA, and the Red Cross. Table 2.2 lists the regressions for these three organizations. For the remaining five organizations, I was able to gather membership information from only a relatively small number of countries, all of which are members of the OECD and therefore of a comparatively higher socioeconomic status than the larger pool of countries. Degrees-offreedom considerations and multicollinearity problems necessitated in some cases the removal of explanatory variables from the regression model. A full explanation of methodology and why variables are eliminated in each case can be found in Appendix A. Table 2.3 tests the explanatory variables against all eight organizations, examining membership in OECD countries only. Because of the relatively small number of cases, the regression results of Table 2.3 should be treated with caution and should be viewed only as preliminary evidence in support of the hypotheses. A more rigorous test of the theory and the hypotheses is carried out through the case study method in Chapter 5. Results Citizen attitudes toward governmental and individual responsibility for dealing with social problems have been demonstrated to be a very powerful predictor of the types of volunteer organizations prevalent in a country. The coefficient is statistically significant in eight of eleven

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table 2.2. Factors Influencing Volunteer Membership around the World (N > 20) Scouting International Attitude of government responsibility Per capita GDP Education Government spending Working women Urbanization Youth (as a control) Adjusted R2 Total N

YMCAa

Red Cross

∗∗

−14.947 (6.883) 0.000 (0.000) –

−2.289 (2.079) 0.000∗∗ (0.000) –

−24.485∗ (14.459) −24.485 (14.459) −2.041 (6.437) 19.040 (14.396) 0.081 59

−2.343 (5.044) 3.231 (5.155) −0.914 (1.863) 4.946 (4.138) 0.488 30

123.871∗∗ (60.074) 0.001 (0.001) 61.679 (54.200) 106.351 (164.170) −10.715 (149.979) 18.804 (66.636) n.a. 0.051 44

Note: Entries are ordinary least squares estimates (unstandardized beta coefficients) with standard errors in parentheses. ∗ p ≤ .1, ∗∗ p ≤ .05, ∗∗∗ p ≤ .01. a The log of the per capita membership was used for these organizations in order to address heteroskedasticity problems. Also, a dummy variable was added for the United States and Canada because they are outliers; unstandardized coefficient = 3.365 (error = 1.062), significant to p = .004.

regressions. In all cases, the effect was in the expected direction – attitudes of government responsibility were positively associated with participation in embedded organizations (Red Cross and volunteer fire departments) and negatively associated with participation in nonembedded organizations (Greenpeace, Lions Clubs, Scouting International, and YMCA). The contribution of alternative variables in explaining the variation of the volunteer participation was minimal. Urbanization and working women were statistically significant for only one organization each. Urbanization was negatively related to participation in YMCAs in OECD countries, and the percentage of women in the work force was positively related to participation in Scouting International – neither urbanization nor women in the work force were significant in the larger-n regressions.

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0.845 8

0.460 8

−9.925∗ (4.887) 0.000 (0.000) – −18.002 (22.294) 4.966 (19.136) −9.169∗ (4.242) −15.886 (40.440) 0.569 13

−11.656∗ (6.718) 0.000∗ (0.000) – −72.553∗∗ (27.029) 51.967∗∗ (23.150) 8.735 (8.105) 19.245 (20.826) 0.387 26

YMCAab

96.602 (106.592) 0.134 10

−1045.350 (547.965) 124.983 (558.090) –

−207.463 (149.033) 0.000 (0.001) –

PTA

0.451 20

228.052∗∗ (83.473) 0.002∗ (0.001) 49.967 (151.603) −44.879 (281.861) 337.503 (287.902) 66.143 (92.000) n.a.

Red Cross

0.639 8

n.a.

–

162.327∗ (53.158) −0.001 (0.000) −366.496∗∗ (112.711) 306.372∗ (109.944) –

Volunteer Firefighters

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Note: Entries are ordinary least squares estimates (unstandardized beta coefficients) with standard errors in parentheses. ∗ p ≤ .1, ∗∗ p ≤ .05, ∗∗∗ p ≤ .01. a The log of the per capita membership was used for these organizations in order to address heteroskedasticity problems. b A dummy variable was added for the United States and Canada because they are outliers; unstandardized coefficient = 3.438 (error = 1.670) significant to p = .095.

Adjusted R2 Total N

Youth

−8.929 (2.650) n.a.

−1.561 (6.440) –

6.516 (3.637) 0.000 (0.000) −13.281 (6.682) 22.465 (12.046) 30.920 (13.088) 2.685 (3.735) n.a.

Scouting International

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Urban

Government spending Working women

−4.093∗ (1.582) 0.000∗∗ (0.000) –

−11.688∗∗ (4.294) 0.000 (0.000) 8.617 (7.558) 15.667 (15.684 −30.608 (17.684) 0.690 (4.590) n.a.

Rotary

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Government responsibility Per capita GDP

Lionsa

Greenpeacea

table 2.3. Factors Influencing Volunteer Membership in OECD Countries (N

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